Hardware Essentials - Digital Cameras
I'm finally getting back on schedule!! Though, to be honest, this summer I will probably have to adopt a regular posting schedule to allow for all my other activities. An educator's summer is full.
Digital cameras provide a unique opportunity for learning. From documenting student progress to having a little fun, from recording whiteboard protocols to making a virtual scrapbook, digital cameras open up doors in education. It is important, then, to know a little bit about them.
This is my camera, only mine says 7.2 in the corner instead of 8.2 We'll talk about what that means in a moment.
There are a few basic things you need to know about a camera:
1. Resolution That's what those numbers in the corner refer to. There was a time when 2.0 megapixels meant crystal-crisp pictures, but now that adjective is used for 8.2 megapixels and beyond. For most educational uses, 2.0 megapixels is probably fine, though you can't buy a camera with resolution that low anymore. It's just not that important for the casual photographer. The resolution, by the way, refers to how much data the camera captures per square inch of image. This image illustrates the concept:
Notice how the pictures look the same from far away, but the closer you get you can see the quality differences. The photo on the left has less information per square inch of image, so it gets blurrier faster than the image on the right as you zoom in. If you take any digital image and zoom in enough, the picture will look like a tile mosaic made of single-color blocks. That's the nature of digital photography. Higher resolution cameras allow you to take crisper larger pictures, but unless you plan on printing photos out on a large scale, the camera that took the picture on the left is more than good enough.
2. Zoom capability This is becoming less and less important with higher-resolution cameras, but the ability to zoom is useful in the classroom. There are two kinds of zoom: optical zoom and digital zoom. Ignore digital zoom. Don't ever use it. Ever. It's just the camera trying to do what Photoshop or GIMP (both of which are photo editing programs) can do much better. The camera's optical zoom tells you how much the image can be zoomed using the lenses, like a traditional camera. The higher the optical zoom, the better for taking pictures from far away. In a classroom, however, this is not very useful.
3. Battery life You don't want your camera running out of juice by third period, so research batter life. There are ways to reduce drain on the battery, such as not using the flash or deactivating the display, but neither one is useful since the flash can be necessary to take good pictures and most modern cameras don't include a viewfinder. Some cameras can charge from USB power and some use batteries.
4. Storage media What does your camera put the pictures on? Most cameras have internal storage, which is quite small, and a place to insert a memory card (which can hold much more data). My camera uses an SD card, which is about as big as a postage stamp and can hold 1 gigabyte (though some newer cards are smaller and have more capacity). I prefer to use the external memory and then recharge my camera using a wall socket. A card reader allows me to take the memory card directly out of my camera and plug it into my computer as if it were a thumb drive. For me, this is very convenient.
5. Photo features Cameras have different modes for different types of settings. Most cameras have a night-time mode, which exposes the foreground with a soft flash and keeps the shutter open to expose the background. This requires stabilizing the camera. In fact, a good number of the special settings require a stable camera, so if you're serious about taking photos in the classroom I'd suggest buying a tripod. They're not expensive. Most cameras also have a portrait mode that is good for taking pictures of people and faces (I think it adjusts the coloring and the focus). All cameras also have an Automatic mode, which is sufficient for 95% of the pictures that most people want to take.
6. Movie capability Your basic digital camera can probably record a movie, but the sound and picture quality won't be good. It can be fun for the occasional clip, but if you're considering recording video, you should buy a dedicated video camera--also becoming quite cheap.
There you have it, digital cameras for educators in a nutshell. Once you have a camera, try giving it to your students for a day and see what kind of pictures they come back with. Since there is not cost to develop film, they will feel liberated to record and document their lives in a way that may be very meaningful for them, especially if they are struggling writers. The pictures produced can be a stimulus for further curricular work, if you structure it correctly.
